Well, after losing my mojo briefly today I did get out, despite the rain. So glad I did, I read a couple of blogs to get me fired up to go out (if others can run in the rain on a busy day, then so can I!)

Last night I'd spent a few hours trawling running sites for different ways to train and the pros and cons of them, following which I thought I would treat myself to an 'EASY' or 'STEADY' run today, to allow me to recover properly from my parkrun on Saturday. I checked my garmin stats to see what my max heart rate has been since I started running 20+ minutes, as a rough guide to my MHR from which to figure out my zones/percentages. So, off I trotted, with no proper route in mind and no goals in terms of distance or time. I thought I'd just trot off for a 20 minute jog, or longer if I felt like it. Wow, it was lovely. I'm going to do this more often (at least once a week). Apart from a little shin twinge a couple of times this was a lovely run. I forgot about my breathing, was able to air guitar (Freebird, thanks to whoever reminded me of that one) and singing to christmas songs along the way. I managed to keep my heart rate mostly around 150-155 bpm, although one hill was just too steep to keep it under 161bpm, which is the top end of steady zone.

So, not only was it a pleasant run, with no pressures on me to do a good time or distance, but I actually achieved another two PBs! At the 20 minute mark I felt like I'd only been running for 5 minutes, so I decided to put in a 47 minute goal (1 more than my previous PB). But when I got to 47 minutes, I thought it would be nice to do 50 minutes. And then I thought it would be such a shame not to run for 1 hour for the very first time. So I ran for 1 hour and 1 minute (the 1 minute to prove it was no fluke!) and to be honest, I could have continued if it hadn't been totally dark and I hadn't run out of water (not to mention having only eaten 1 banana and a handful of pringles all day). I didn't take much notice of the distance while I was running, but now I'm back and checked my stats I can see that I achieved 5.34 miles (previous PB 4.4) or 8.6km. If I count the warm up and cool down walks (about 14 minutes) then I did a total of 6.23 miles - that's 10.03km I now KNOW that I can do a 10km, I'm so excited

Right, now to finish present wrapping and check where santa has reached on his deliveries so far (my daughter loves checking that online!).

Merry christmas and happy running to you all (and get well soon for the poorlies!) xx